


first night

by lostsometime



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Day 13, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pike POV, Pneumonia, Sickfic, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostsometime/pseuds/lostsometime
Summary: For Whumptober 2020, day #13 - "Breathe In, Breathe Out"Percy has pneumonia when they first break him out of that jail cell.  It's a rough night.
Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III & Vox Machina
Comments: 5
Kudos: 114
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	first night

When they first pull the white-haired stranger out of that prison cell, he looks pretty rough. Pike heals his injuries with little trouble, including several cracked ribs that had made his breathing painful for weeks. Afterwards, he takes a deep, grateful breath – and breaks into terrible, hacking coughs. A quick check confirms what Pike had already suspected – that the injured ribs had restricted his breathing long enough for pneumonia to sink its claws into him, and the pain in his chest won’t ease just because she healed the fractured bone. She informs him of this in as matter-of-fact a way as she can, and he seems to understand. _Then again,_ she thinks, as she takes note of the glassy look in his bloodshot eyes and the feverish heat of his skin, _he may just be nodding along because it seems like the thing to do_.

Another fit of coughing seizes him, wracking his whole body with shudders. He’s much too thin; Pike suspects he was malnourished even before his arrest. The twins exchange an uncomfortable look as he shivers, and Vex asks “Can you heal him?”

“It’s sickness, not injury,” Pike explains, “so I’d need a different spell, and I don’t have it prepared. But! If we take some time to rest – and we should, anyway – I can prepare new spells and fix him up first thing in the morning.” She turns to the man (who couldn’t get through the entirety of his own name without dissolving into a coughing fit, finally choking out ‘Just – call me Percy,’) and smiles encouragingly. “That okay?”

“I don’t think… my opinion on the matter… is going to change much,” he says, breathing in shallow sips of air. “You’ve already been… very kind.”

Pike maintains her comforting smile while they roll out a bedroll for Percy and encourage him to rest – but once he has, she hooks an arm through one of Vax’s and draws him a ways away to talk quietly.

“I don’t want to worry anybody because it might be fine but… I could use some help keeping an eye on him. Fevers tend to spike in the evenings. Just – watch him and let me know if his condition changes while I’m talking to Sarenrae, ok?”

She’s not sure why she picked Vax as her assistant for this. He’s not any more “responsible” for their guest than any of the others. Sure, when they broke him out of the dungeon, Vax was the one who did most of the actual breaking-out, but that was because Vax is the best at picking locks. Still, Vax was the first of them to get into the cell, the first to really talk to Percy, and the first to help him stumble out. And more than that, she’s seen the way Vax watches her when she heals, something almost hungry in his gaze.

The first indication they get from Percy that his fever’s rising is the soft sounds of distress he makes as his dreams take a turn for the worse. He’s tossing restlessly in the grip of a fever dream when his own harsh breathing wakes him up with a hacking cough. Rather than attempt sleep again, he sits talking to the others - he seems to get along quite easily with Vex and Tiberius, in particular. 

He’s okay for a little while – able to converse coherently, if not perhaps as wittily as he would like – but by the time the sun has set behind the mountains, he’s more than half-delirious with fever. He’s shaking with chills even as his skin radiates sickly heat, and he mumbles names that none of them recognize while they try to coax water down his throat. Pike brews some willow tea, good as a fever-reducer and painkiller, and spends the better part of an hour getting him to drink it. At one point he cries out for his mother, sounding _painfully_ young and fragile, and Pike has to bite her lip to keep her composure.

She recruits Tiberius, with his jug of endless water, and Keyleth, with her nature magic, to make some ice. They soak rags in the meltwater and wrap them around his limbs and body as the fever climbs higher. He shivers and tries to fight her but he’s too weak and uncoordinated. She ducks past his feeble attempt to ward her off and drapes an ice-cold cloth around his shoulders, and he whimpers like she'd struck him. Finally, as he gets so ill he slips fully out of consciousness, she determines that they need to bring the fever down in whatever way they can before it kills him.

Hesitates, because he’s still practically a stranger, tells herself he’s just another patient, and has the others help her strip him to the waist and pack actual ice around his body. Hesitates again when the shirt comes off and she sees the scars.

Keyleth and Tiberius don’t really understand what they’re seeing, which is something of a blessing – but Vex and Vax know what torture looks like. There is a very uncomfortable moment, before Vex squeezes her brother’s arm and then starts helping Pike with the ice.

They don’t really talk about it, but they all sort of silently agree to pretend like they didn’t see what they saw, and to pretend they don’t hear him when he begs for mercy in the grips of whatever nightmare has him, and to pretend they don’t notice when he cries in his sleep, calling out for someone named ‘Cass’ with desperate, pleading apologies. There’s a lot, in the months that follow, as they gradually get to know and care for Percy, that they pretend didn’t happen that night.

In the morning, Pike casts Restoration.

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware that the prompt reads, specifically, "chemical pneumonia," but I've had this story sitting in my drafts for years so oh well.


End file.
